


A Beautiful Lie

by Ver (verloren1983)



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: Character Death, F/M, M/M, Original Character(s), POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-09
Updated: 2011-02-09
Packaged: 2017-10-28 23:36:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/313411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verloren1983/pseuds/Ver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Denial is a river so deep you could drown in it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Beautiful Lie

**Author's Note:**

> Oh God, I'm so sorry. XD My brain decided to come up with this awful head canon for this particular character. So much so that I had to write it, because I just couldn't get it out of my head. D:

His name is Tadashi. You've known each other since you were both small children to the point where you don't remember a life without him. He's a year older, but somehow the two of you seem to make everything a competition, both on the board and off. School, before you graduated. Girls. He's the more handsome of the two of you with his quick smile and warm eyes, but you're taller, more broad shouldered. Women like that.

He's your rival in every sense of the word. You spend not just a little time trying to figure out how to beat him in one area of your life or another. He's not quite as strong as you are in Go, but he's not far off, and you both have incredible potential according to all the whispering around you. You think that if you're going to need a partner to reach the Hand of God, you'd rather it be Tadashi than anyone else.

You're not quite sure when it starts to become something else- but you know the exact moment when it all changes irrevocably. You're twenty-three. The two of you are sitting in his apartment with a goban between you, arguing about an experimental move you've just made that Tadashi insists is the stupidest thing he's ever seen in his entire life, which you find incredibly insulting, considering some of the stunts he's pulled. In a display of stunning maturity, you fling a black stone from your goke at his face. Tadashi stares at you. He looks as angry as you've ever seen him and he grabs the front of your shirt like he's about to punch you, but then the impossible happens.

He kisses you instead.

It's nothing like kissing girls has ever been. It's rough and needy and ohmygodrightnow, and your head swims with the intensity of it. It's the most amazing thing you've ever felt.

Neither of you have ever been with another man before, but suddenly you're lying on the floor with Tadashi on top of you and you're rubbing against each other as if your lives depend on it. You couldn't even be bothered to take the time to undress, as you're reminded of unpleasantly when it's over, when you're both panting heavily and grimacing at your soiled slacks.

Tadashi becomes insufferable after that. He thinks he's discovered something about the two of you. It's not you, though. You are not that person. It keeps happening because he's there and it feels good. He even puts his mouth on you, once, and it makes your brain shatter into tiny pieces. You've never been able to get a girl to do that for you before. It's not love, you tell yourself. It's convenient.

You meet a woman at a bar and start dating her. Somehow, even though Tadashi was supposed to be a strange fling between girlfriends, you continue fooling around. Tadashi is jealous. He's perfectly polite to her face, he's always nice to people, but he constantly shoots verbal barbs in Yumi's direction when she's not around. He doesn't understand why you have a girlfriend. You try to explain it, but he hears what he wants to hear anyway, which he calls denial. You proceed to have the worst fight your strange rivalry has ever endured and you leave, intending to never speak to him again.

The next thing you hear about him makes your stomach twist in knots. He'd gotten himself caught making out with a man outside of the Institute, apparently, or at least that's what rumor says. Knowing how things circulate, you figure that it was probably much tamer than that. Either way, the damage is done. Tadashi wasn't just thrown out of the Pro circuit and banned from the Institute, he was erased. All of his records were destroyed. When the gossip stops, it will be as if he never existed at all. Just the imagination of those who bother to remember.

And then, just as suddenly, it's all over, every last bit of it. You kneel at the gravestone and trace Tadashi's name, over and over again, as if it will bring him back. It doesn't.

He couldn't take being thrown out of the Pros, it's being said. You think there's just a little bit more to it than that. He'd never been the kind of man whose entire life revolved around the game. You can't help but feel guilty. You were the one that told him the entire thing was a terrible mistake. That you were never in love in the first place. That Tadashi had overstepped and assumed you were something that you weren't. Maybe you're partially responsible and maybe you're not, but you can't help but shoulder the blame anyway.

You go around in a bit of a haze after that, never really dating any woman seriously, and then you're introduced to her. She's the daughter of one of the 9-dan Pros, and she's the most beautiful woman you've ever seen. Even her name is beautiful. Akiko. For the first time in a long time, you allow yourself to truly smile.


End file.
